Wow..... just look at all the hate.

"But why bother with Windows? What can you do that you cannot do with Linux?"

If the Author had written this the other way around in a different article, he would have been subject to a torrent of hate in the comments.

For years, Linux supporters (of which I'm one) have argued that people should be given the ability to *choose* what they put on their hardware. However, what many of them seem to interpret that as "*I should be able to put Linux on this!"

Blogs, articles and forums have been full of penguin-heads for years shouting that they had successfully installed their preferred flavour of Linux on phones, NAS devices, Chromebooks (or laptops with none-supported drivers).... All in the name of choice and doing what *they* wanted.

Apparently (judging by the comments), fans of the Windows OS aren't allowed the same thing.

This is a major software company committing support for their future OS on a popular learning platform - In no way is this a bad thing, so please pick your dummies up from the floor.

Not looked at the store in a long time..... Wow.

It's like looking at a bad CafePress store, with just the logo stamped onto generic items - Considering that the site had a complete revamp, was this quietly forgotten in the process? Is the person running it part of a government "return to work" scheme?

Mobe charger - Currently being given out by Vendors everywhere as marketing freebies (I have collected 6 from ArcServe so far, I doubt my office workers will ever run out of charge again)

Same goes for the torch / Polo's .... and the knife just looks like a bad photoshop :(

C'mon Reg, increase the standard - at the moment it just looks like you are trying to shift excess orders from your marketing dept.

Re: testing...

"For those reading who are not Linux users BTRFS offers a copy-on-write facility which prevents your data from be accidentally damaged. e.g. from Cryptlocker or some other havoc reaper... This has been a common feature in professional environment for many years, so it is nice it makes it to the desktop. There are many others, but this one is probably very new to Windows users..."

Thanks for doing something that the Reviewer didn't bother with (explaining BTRFS) despite harping on about it for the entire last page of the review ;)

Isn't this how Labs have been built for years?

I know several colleges that take this route to source cheap Powervaults for storage, and write off the electric cost as OpEx. There are some that even schedule cast-offs from other organisations into their own upgrade cycle for things like switches.

It isn't always the best solution, but sometimes when budget is extremely tight (Charities, cash-strapped Uni departments, teaching / testing labs) and time is not at a premium it is a viable option.

With a little shrewd work, it is possible to obtain a perfectly usable lab with minimal CapEx outlay

Re: seems to be quite a bit of innovation

However, I think there is a slight skew in some of the maths - Most Test / Dev environments are kept on all the time because:

1 - The kit is from decommissioned live environments (and therefore there is no Cap-Ex), and is therefore so old the tech's are afraid to turn it off.

2 - Tech's are too lazy to spin it all up again as (and when) needed. Much easier just to have an RDP session available for use when you can grab a spare few minutes (or have an hour to kill on a friday ;-) )

Test / Dev tends to costs only power and space...... meaning its a soft target for transition to cloud if you have a hippie-friendly Carbon reduction scheme on the go....

Just a change from all the naysayers

Thanks for this Trevor - Always interesting to see other peoples take no a test lab (especially when its not just pulled from recycled kit, as it 99.99% of cases ;-) )

One point on FreeNAS, I gave it a look and *really* wanted it to work as a VM replacement for for 2 NetApp StorVault units they decided werent good enough to support a Win2008 Domain. However, despite my best efforts (and a few others) and a trawling of forums, the AD integration just refused to work on 8.3. :(

Re : Shouldn't that be 'Kinect goes Xbox Buster'?

WOW - Nice showing of a BBC News technology article, second only to Private eye in the field of spectacular accuracy and investigative journalism :-/

The article boils down to two sections:

1. A quote from one guy who rang into Radio 4 (says it all, really) and mentioned that after his warranty expired, the xbox died - so, story is "Xbox360 over three years old dies - SHOCK".

2. Author then goes onto a couple of forum's, and copy/pastes two posts slagging off the kinect and how it destroyed their box etc etc.

I'm not a fan of kinect by ANY stretch (nearly the same price as the console, stupid delayed way of pausing games. crap first wave of games which are more proof of concept than anything) but lets not jump on the "Accessory blows up console" bandwagon *just* yet.

So in effect.....

"a camera button as well as a power button. The latter two are dual-function: tapping on power button either locks or wakes up the phone, half pressure on the camera button starts the camera focusing, while pressing fully takes a snap."

WTF?!?! - Am I the only person who believes that this is a terrible idea, resulting in lots of "accidental" snaps as you tried to take a damn picture?

Now , Im by no means an iPhone fan... but I cant help thinking that MS have taken the decision "You know what? Apples right..... people are stupid" and just locked out everything.

Heres hoping 7.1 will add support for removable storage in V2 phones and iron out the kinks (and for the sake of balance, kudos for adding in XBox live and a getting the browser working well on a review phone)

"Government tries something new - lets extract the urine!"

<sigh>.... Much as I liked spitting image as much as the next bloke, I do really grow tired of the doom-mongers who rubbish every government before its walked in the door.

1. Country is ****ed due to MASSIVE overspending.

2. This new (shock - coalition! watch as the world collapses etc etc) government see's there is no cash left, and tries to gather a bit of public opinion whilst sifting through the idiots..... in an attempt to make policy that is remotely popular

3. Attempt is laughed at, and they are blamed for every cut for the evil man they surely are.

My political bias aside, it amazes me how forgetful this country is, and how they expect money to magically appear out of thin air.

Need a title here....

You want pure speed (which used to be FIrefox's domain) - You install Chrome.

You want features and standards - You install Opera

You want to be lazy and things to work without caring about anything - You carry on using IE :(

I have *two* websites that don't work in Opera (and both are because the web dev was too bloody lazy to include it in the list of identified browsers, since the "identify as IE" option magically makes things better).... Im no fanboi (leave it on all day and watch the RAM usage riiiiiiiise.....) but its a good browser that handles 12+ tabs stabily with alarming regularity on an old P4 2.8GHz.

I admit (with FF) the Ebay toolbar is handy and I suppose "personas" are kinda nice in a home User way. But the browser often just "freezes" for a few seconds before letting me carry on and the bloat is increasing with every release.

re: "This Stinks"

<Quote>None of the phones they offer are any good, in Decemeber I had a choice of 41. Now I have a choice of 6. None of which are top class. (They removed the N97 and G2 from my options of upgrades) I can't help think they are either squeezing me, or they are cutting costs for the merger.</quote>

Most Operators base your upgrade options on your previous years usage, others also factor in length of contract and time as a customer. If you are squeezing them (i.e spending £150 over the year max) then they are hardly likely to throw a £300+ smartphone at you in return for another years revenue, are they? :-(

Anyway, T-Mobile are an irrelevant annoyance to me, used by PAYG chavs in line with Virgin / Tesco / ADSA mobile etc etc.

I use O2, and suprisingly they've been great (as long as you know how to play the cancel / upgrade game) and compared to Vodaphone they're gods (in contrast to Orange, who STILL think Im with them despite porting my number 4yrs ago!)

Plonkers

MS are behaving is a very "Apple" way on this one, and I cant believe Im saying that....

iPlayer has changed from a dog-slow and annoying app to a Sky-Plus style "Bloody hell thats handy" part of my viewing life - I've used it on the Wii (white useless piece of Apple wannabe kit that it is) and it actually works really well :)

I have no issue with paying some points for the App itself (because believe it or not, developers have to EAT (shock)) but to restrict access to a free service is bonkers, as they arent responsible for the App!

Methinks they dont want it (even though it would shift more units) as it will expose the SKY Player for the overpriced piece of shoddyness that it is :)